Ken Burns effect???

DataMeister wrote on 8/21/2007, 11:06 PM
I basicly cut my teeth on Vegas when learning video editing techinques and aside from some short forays into the other brands I've stayed in Vegas whenever I have a say so in the process.

In the last few years I've been seeing plugins, tutorials, and other stuff talking about achieving the Ken Burns effect with panning and zooming on still photos. Things like the new Boris Continuum Complete 5 (from a recent Boris email) is one recent example that comes to mind.
http://www.borisfx.com/product/continuum/after_effects/pan_zoom_filter.php

In fact last year I was hired by a small producer to pan and zoom (with a video camera) around a table set with old black and white photographs ... for him to later edit in Final Cut Pro. I didn't understand why he didn't want to use the software to do that himself instead of trying to direct me. I even went so far as to suggested that he take a high res photo as a backup (in case he wanted to change a move). But he acted like he didn't even understand the concept of what I was trying to suggest.

So I have to ask....
Are all these "Ken Burns" plugins and tutorials trying to achieve something more advanced than what Vegas has been doing easily since version 3? Or am I just spoiled?

Comments

DGates wrote on 8/21/2007, 11:21 PM
The "Ken Burns Effect" is simply the panning and zooming of photographs. Nothing more, nothing less. He first did this in his "Civil War" documentary way back in 1990. Although he did it the hard way like you, by either moving the camera or the platform holding the photograph. Previous to that, most documentaries just had a static image of photographs used in their productions.

It's much easier, and looks much better, to do it with an NLE. Vegas was one of the first to make this look good. Panning and zooming with early versions of Premiere always ended up jerky and unusable.
Jessariah67 wrote on 8/22/2007, 2:07 PM
Pan/Crop all the way. It's amazing what just a little zoom in or out on a still will do to make a "slideshow" very dynamic.